On Sanctuary: A Poem by Nikki Giovanni

by Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde, Visitation Companion

Art Sanctuary
by Nikki Giovanni

I would always choose to be the person running
rather than the mob chasing
I would prefer to be the person laughed at
rather than the teenagers laughing
I always admired the men and women who sat down
for their rights
And held in disdain the men and women who spat
on them
Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are
safe
Art offers Sanctuary to everyone willing
to open their hearts as well as their eyes

“Art Sanctuary” by Nikki Giovanni, from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. © Harper Perennial, 2002. (buy now)

Today’s poem from The Writer’s Almanac speaks to me as prayer. In critical response fashion, I take note of lines, phrases, images that stand out:

person running
mob
laughing teenagers
sitting down for rights
spit
art
sanctuary
open hearts and eyes

I am reminded of the summer night I saw a man running out from behind the neighbor’s across from St. Jane House in north Minneapolis followed by another person carrying a gun. The poem takes me to stories of pre-1964 southern lunch counters where people with brown skin were not allowed to eat. Simultaneously, reading this, I recall being an awkward thirteen-year old in the seventh grade and feeling the jeers of 8th grade elders (Lisa, Mary, Steph, Jamie?). I can see movie stills in my mind’s eye of Harvey Milk being assassinated as San Francisco’s first openly gay city official. I sit and imagine a beleaguered and weary Christ on Good Friday. (He was spat upon, right?) I note the way the poem provides a through-line of text for these anachronistic memories, moments.

I appreciate Ms. Giovanni’s words. I am thankful for the pride, sorrow, fear, anger and elation that her piece evokes.

I wonder how the author’s compassion was born? (It is compassion she shows in the poem, yes?) What did she see in her life or experience that inspired an alignment with the victim, the tortured, the other? What particular cruelties does she know first hand? I want to ask her how she makes sense of suffering. I want to know what art in particular has provided safety, sanctuary for her. Could she have been sitting in front of a painting that calmed her breathing, opened her heart? (Or listening to song?) I wonder if she’d let me sit alongside her? I want to know if she’s ever seen Brother Mickey’s “Windsock Visitation“? Has she ever contemplated the respite extended by Mary and Elizabeth?

I want to know a lot reading this poem. I am grateful for the places Nikki Giovanni takes me with her words. It is my prayer, today. This poem is a sanctuary.

Amen.

"Ancestors:" A Meditation

It's my grandmother Borgmann's 95th birthday next week. Our family is gathering from all over the Midwest - and beyond - to celebrate this matriarch of our clan who resides in Osmond, Nebraska. Ninety five years. What has someone seen in 95 years? Whew. What have they lived through? Makes my head spin trying to imagine.

Grandma Adeline's youngest child, my aunt Marian, has been compiling memories of Grandma B. As the last in the brood of 11, Marian is sort of the family historian. She began a book project for her mother - that includes a chapter devoted to each of her eleven children. These pages swirl in my mind this morning. I can see the pictures and bios of all my aunts and uncles, each of my cousins making an attempt to document their lives. It's an act of deep regard, reverence, I think. The book is a way to honor Julia Adeline Schilling Borgmann's time on the planet. It's a way for each and everyone of us to take stock of where we come from. In the same vein, I think it is also an equal invitation to consider where we are going.

Where will we be at age 95? How many of us will be around? What will we have witnessed? What will we have created? What will we have let go? What will our homes and hearts, families, careers look like? Where will we reside?

Enter: Today's poem. Harvey Ellis' work, "ancestors," shared this day on "The Writer's Almanac," thrusts me smack dab into the middle of all these questions. I am surrounded by contemplations of not only Julia Adeline, but of her spouse, Johnny. I can see the sapia-hued photographs and skin tones of Edna Bell Arduser, Great Grandpa Liewer, the scads of boxed images of my mixed-German-ancestry. I wonder if a picture of Clara or Matthias is contained anywhere - as the original owners of my engagement diamond? I know Great Grandpa Henry is there -- the boxer who rode the train from Cincinnati. I return to Grandma B, and recall her own train ride tales over the US landscape. I can hear her deep, baritone voice, tell me about traveling from Reno and back, with a divorcee, (whose name was Rose?). I recall my own awe-struck silence listening to her first hand account of meeting Amelia Earhart at a Chicago Luncheon while visiting a cousin. I see her sewing and making sandwiches for a Jewish family she nannied for on the east coast, prior to her own married and mothering days. I try to fathom my own life, with her alongside me. Her blood and marrow in my own bones. Her parents - and all of my other Borgmann/ Schilling/ Liewer/ Arduser ancestors - filling out the sinews of my body. Their lives informing mine. Their steps, tracks, train rides, boat-rides, guiding mine.

It's something to consider, you know?

I invite you to read Ellis' poem copied below. Drink it in. Meditate on your own ancestry. Who is beside you? Who is breathing within? How are you moving and stretching and making things happen today? What parent, aunt, uncle, great-great, do you want to draw on in your journey at this moment? You know they are close by.

Happy Contemplating!

Melissa

ancestors

by Harvey Ellis

my ancestors surround me
like walls of a canyon
quiet
stone hard
their ideas drift over me
like breezes at sunset

we gather sticks
and make settlements
what we do is only partly
our own
and partly continuation
down through the chromosomes

my son
my baby sleeps behind me
stirring in the night
for the touch
that lets him continue

he is arranging
in his small form the furniture
and windows of his home

it will be a lot like mine
it will be a lot like theirs

"ancestors" by Harvey Ellis from Sleep Not Sleep. © Wolf Ridge Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

On "Particle Physics" - Posting a Poem for Quantum Love?

From Today's Writer's Almanac, a poem that perplexes and pleases me. A Quantum physics poem, to be sure. Or is it a baseball poem? Or lost love poem? Hmmmm.....
Critical response questions follow. Read on.

Particle Physics
by Julie Kane

They say two photons fired through a slit
stay paired together to the end of time;
if one is polarized to change its spin,
the other does a U-turn on a dime,
although they fly apart at speeds of light
and never cross each other's paths again,
like us, a couple in the seventies,
divorced for almost thirty years since then.
Tonight a Red Sox batter homered twice
to beat the Yankees in their playoff match,
and, sure as I was born in Boston, when
that second ball deflected off the bat,
I knew your thoughts were flying back to me,
though your location was a mystery.

"Particle Physics" by Julie Kane from Jazzy Funeral. © Story Line Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission. Information about the WCU Poetry Center.
(buy now)

Questions:
What would it mean to be fired through a slit together?
You and me?
Have you ever wondered what makes one polarized?
What gives you a charge?
Know anyone to turn on a dime?
Can you fathom the speed of light?
How would it feel to never lay eyes on her again? Or him?
Would you ache?
How are baseball and physics and love all connected?
(Have you seen "Bull Durham"? I wonder if Susan Sarandon reads such poems or blogs?) What is your location?
Who do you love?
What have you lost?
How can we win home runs in love?
What do particles do when they divorce?
What do particles do when they love?
What are you and I made up of?
What does our matter say to these queries?
To this poem?
Can we ever put our finger on mystery?


Happy Questions and Contemplation!
Love,
Melissa

Today's Writer's Almanac Poem: "Flannery's Angel"

Flannery's Angel
by Charles Wright

Lead us to those we are waiting for,
Those who are waiting for us.
May your wings protect us,
may we not be strangers in the lush province of joy.

Remember us who are weak,
You who are strong in your country which lies beyond the thunder,
Raphael, angel of happy meeting,
resplendent, hawk of the light.

"Flannery's Angel" by Charles Wright, from Sestets: Poems. © Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2009. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

***

What a great poem for today. I slurp homemade Italian Wedding soup, think of the bread baker that has come into my life - and read Charles Wright's words, marveling at the way it all feels connected.

Soup.

Bread.

Angels.

Amen.

I'm happy to know a real life Raphael, as well, in one Sr. Rafael Tilton!

Joy to the angels in your life that lead you, and the way your quiet prayers inform the journey.

Love! Happy Contemplating!

On Poetry and Anxiety at 4am: "Horses at Midnight Without a Moon"

I woke this morning at 4 a.m. in total fear and anxiety. Do you know this feeling?

Imagine my 40 year old frame stirring: gasping for breath, sweating from too many blankets -- or the heat of bad dreams -- and the dance of my life's failures before me. All the missed deadlines, poorly completed assignments, all the areas that I could imagine I sucked in my work and relationships were parading around my bed. It was not a fun place to be at 4 a.m.

Alone. In darkness. Trying to breathe.

I replayed the dreams that took me to that moment. The long ago awkward lover showing up to greet my parents, though his presence was no longer desired. (Failure to marry?) The creative writing and performance tasks that a dear friend was completing, while I watched and took notes, but didn't dare attempt. (Failure to publish?) The former student whose heart and brilliant mind inspired me, but who I failed to ever broadcast or promote. This young man crossing the street, waving, dancing, but seemingly taunting me: you didn't ever really do anything for me as a teacher! (Failure to acknowledge?) The colleague's questions and artistic processes that I knew transformed lives, but who I didn't document. (Failure to act?)

I was shrouded in some crazy darkness and doubt, some ego-laden fears about what I conceive of my life's work and purpose, and what I have truly accomplished. It was hard. I wanted to cry. I felt really alone and unable to shirk the sweaty salty experience of an anxiety attack at 4 am.

So I prayed. I replayed James' Finley describing Siddhartha, and how this man did one extraordinarily simple, but radical act: "Buddha sat and calmed himself." I tried to do this same thing. I breathed in and out and in and out. I said the "Our Father" five times. Then, a bit more calm, I looked at my dreams and these fears presenting themselves in my awake state. I saw my ridiculous ego thinking I was all that and capable of Christ-like activity. I laughed. I said, "Thank you," to the nuns in my life and sent a couple notes of prayer and gratitude out to my okay-to-text-at-4am-family-and-friends.

And then I read this poem. Pulling up the Writer's Almanac on my pda, I took in Jack Gilbert's piece, "Horses at Midnight Without a Moon" and I laughed and wept with the incredible resonance of poetry speaking to me. Art mirroring life.

And now, how many hours later, after a day's work, and some time to look back at it all, I share it with you. How many wake in these pre-light hours with such dark thoughts? Who encounters their own egos in such a crazed dance of desire and drama, fear and shame? Who finds Gilbert and celebrates his similar knowing about the heart and the animal world and the hope present in it all?

Enjoy the poem! Happy Contemplating!

Love,

Melissa

***

Horses At Midnight Without A Moon
by Jack Gilbert

Horses At Midnight Without A Moon
by Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

"Horses At Midnight Without A Moon" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

In Blackwater Woods - by Mary Oliver

Thank you Writer's Almanac.

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Letter of Resignation - A Poem by William Baer

Can you imagine sending a letter of resignation to a lover?

This poem, from today's "Writer's Almanac," made me laugh, sigh, and say, "Thank you." I am thankful for knowing love, and thankful for trusting in its unceasing presence in all of our lives.

Oh! And I say, "thank you" to William Baer for writing this; and "thank you" Minnesota Public Radio for sharing it!

Smiles, Peace,

Melissa

Letter of Resignation

by William Baer

Dear [blank]: After much deliberation,
without qualm, scruple, or further delay,
I hereby tender my formal resignation
as your lover and future fiancé.
The job provides too little satisfaction:
too many hours of unneeded duress,
a paucity of productive interaction,
uncertain working conditions, and endless stress.
Pay-wise, I'm undervalued and disenchanted:
advancement's slow, the bonus is routine,
my "on-call" overtime is taken for granted,
and benefits are few and far between.
This document, I'm hopeful, underscores
my deep regret. I'm very truly yours....

"Letter of Resignation" by William Baer from Bocage and Other Sonnets. © Texas Review Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission.(buy now)

On DNA - From Today's Writer's Almanac

This information in today's Writer's Almanac about DNA makes me happy. "Deoxyribose nucleic acid." Say that three times really fast! To contemplate the building blocks of our bodies, beings.....?!

I say "Thank you" to Watson and Crick for their work compiling others' research efforts. I celebrate the initially, un-acknowledged Rosalind Franklin. I marvel considering who and where our next Nobel-prize winning scientists are. I stand in awe considering all the information that is held in my own DNA, as well as yours. "What will we discover or learn next?"

***

It was on this day in 1953 that Watson and Crick published the article in which they proposed the structure of DNA. The article appeared in Nature magazine, and it was only about a page long. It began, "We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest." Their hypothesis about the double-helix structure of DNA revolutionized biology and paved the way for the field of genetics. Some science historians rank their feat with Newton describing the laws of physics.

Watson and Crick's discovery was actually the result of synthesizing many other people's ideas and research. They spent relatively little time in the laboratory doing experiments. They relied on the research of others, especially Rosalind Franklin, who had taken X-ray photographs of DNA samples. Their initial failure to acknowledge their huge debt to her caused a great debate in the scientific world. Many people felt that she should have shared the Nobel Prize, which Watson and Crick won in 1962.

On Anniversaries: Getting to the Fine Day of Walter McDonald's Poem

My recent writing about "swooning" ("Weak-in-the-Knees-at-Walgreens") triggered a whole series of responses from you. Included in these, were my own family's musings about the way many members made their way toward marriage. Our Borgmann-Family Blog was lit up with tales loosely given the title, "Melissa's Knees: Our Love Stories" by my Aunt Marian. It was great fun to read these narratives, and to glean other such moments of "swooning" and first encounters. It took me personally into the larger space of our individual and collective journeys toward commitment, and how messy and fun and hard and exciting that all is. Today's Writer's Almanac poem speaks to these journeys, from one poet's sweet, love-heartache-reflection perspective.

Enjoy!

Anniversary: One Fine Day
by Walter McDonald

Who would sit through a plot as preposterous as ours,
married after years apart? Chance meetings may work
early in stories, but at operas, darling, in Texas?
A bachelor pilot, I fled Laredo for the weekend,
stopping at the opera from boredom, music I least expected.
Of all the zoos and honky-tonks south of Dallas,
who would believe I would find you there on the stairs,

Madame Butterfly about to start? When you moved
four years before, I lost all hope of dying happy,
dogfighting my way through pilot training, reckless,
in terror only when I saw the man beside you.
I had pictured him rich and splendid in my mind
a thousand times, thinking you married with babies
somewhere in Tahiti, Spain, the south of France.

When I saw the lucky devil I hated—only your date,
but I didn't know—he stopped gloating, watching you wave,
turned old and bitter like the crone in Shangri La.
Destiny happens only in plays and cheap movies—
but here, here on my desk is your photo, decades later,
and I hear sounds from another room of our house,
and when I rise amazed and follow, you are there.

"Anniversary: One Fine Day" by Walt McDonald, from Blessings the Body Gave. © Ohio State University Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

A "Welcome Home from Africa" - Rising Poem....

"There is no disorientation quite like sleep depravataion combined with the jet lag." -Colette DeHarpporte

***

I am home from Africa, having arrived yesterday around noon, from the glorious Accra, Ghana. My heart does a funny leap writing this line, now at 3:47am in my St. Paul, Minnesota apartment, where a Winter draft greets my still-in-Africa-skin, and my body struggles to re-acclimate to the cold, this time zone. Yes.

Today's Writer's Almanac Poem*, by Robert Bly, arrives in my in box, next to my friend Colette's email, like sweet, warm, sort of "Welcome home!" words.

Disoriented, rising at this hour of dark, when my head expects light, I recognize Bly's words alive and at work inside my being: "Navies are setting forth in my veins." Yes. Little ships are moving, porting packages from my heart toward other destinations in the body. African gifts of story, memory, warmth, are being toted through my blood stream as I wake and wonder where I am, and what this air is that moves from outside, through the cracks in my windows, over my exposed South-African-Zanzibarian-Kenyan-Ugandan-Ghanaian-sun-tanned limbs....

I am happy thinking of the Indian Ocean. I am ecstatic seeing Saddam Dzikunun-Bansah's face in my mind's eye, or hearing Dumisani Ntombelas's voice the other side of a line, sending me off with South African parting words. I giggle thinking of Nomi Nkomo's sweet, silly text messages standing in line at customs. I marvel at the Dorothy Amenuke-Art-house-Arthaus dreams still alive and being constructed in real life time in Kumasi -- as well as in my own imagination. I wonder about Ishaka Mawanda and Emily Morris and if they are carrying Africa with them in their now on-safari-in-Minnesota-blood streams...? (Surely, they must understand this poem and the way waking so early in the cold affects the heart, mind, spirit.) I hold the questions of Patrick Kilonzo and Kenyan-Paper-making-collaborations in my rising body -- along with a happy desire to return to the Eastern Cape and squeeze a beloved Auntie Mo Dabula by her 70th birthday....

I read "Welcome Home" emails from State Side family and friends with requests for my American address and imagine the Holiday greeting cards that will arrive at 2338 Marshall Avenue in St. Paul. (Where will these cards arrive next year, or years to come? What is my address? Where do I live?) Hmmmmm......Where does any of us really reside?

A woman named Nozi, who is not my South African Community Development friend from Nquthu, drops me a line wondering how she got onto my Africa-emails-list-serve. I wonder this, too. My head filled with poems and dizzy dawn dreams and so much desire to locate my body in a proper time, place, aligning all of me with what my heart knows. Where does Ms. Motloung live? What is her email address? Where am I? Where are you?

Happy Morning. Happy Rising and Return Journeys to all who read this.

Yes!

Love,

Melissa

*Waking from Sleep

by Robert Bly

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,

Tiny explosions at the waterlines,

And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.

It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.

Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full

Of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.

Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast!

Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,

Mist, and masts rising, the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.

Now we sing, and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.

Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;

We know that our master has left us for the day.

"Waking from Sleep" by Robert Bly, from Silence in the Snowy Fields. © Wesleyan University Press, 1962. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Happy Birthday Thich Nhat Hanh!

Thank you Writer's Almanac for this information! I love this fellow who lives half way around the world and speaks so directly to my heart. What follows are the biographical info from Garrison Keillor's broadcast on NPR, a You Tube Video link, and a Thich Nhat Hanh poem. Enjoy! Happy Birthday to this Peaceful Man!

It's the birthday of Vietnamese monk, writer, and activist Thich Nhat Hanh, (books by this author) born in 1926 in Tha Tien, Vietnam. He became a Buddhist monk when he was 16 years old. During the Vietnam War, he decided that monks shouldn't just stay in monasteries and meditate all day long while a war was going on. So he founded an organization that helped rebuild bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, and organize agricultural cooperatives. He traveled to the United States to urge the American government to withdraw its troops, and he persuaded Martin Luther King Jr. to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. But both the non-Communist and Communist governments banned him from Vietnam in 1966, and it was just a few years ago, in 2005, that he was finally allowed to return for a visit. Since he was banned from Vietnam, he set up a monastic community in southern France, called Plum Village.

Thich Nhat Hanh has published more than 100 books, books of poetry and Buddhist thought. About 40 of them are in English, and many of those have been best-sellers, including Peace Is Every Step (1991), Call Me by My True Names (1993), and Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995).

***

A You Tube Video Link on "Surrendering to the Now."

***

Interrelationship

You are me, and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.

I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.


1989. Written during a retreat for psychotherapists held in Colorado
in response to Fritz Perls' statement, "You are you, and I am me, and 
if by chance we meet, that's wonderful.  If not, it couldn't be helped."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

"Now" - A Poem by Greg Watson that I like....

Now
by Greg Watson

I told you once when we were young that
we would someday meet again.
Now, the years flown past, the letters
unwritten, I am not so certain.

It is autumn. There are toothaches hidden
in this wind, there are those determined
to bring forth winter at any cost.
I am resigned to dark blonde shadows

at stoplights, lost in the roadmaps of leaves
which point in every direction at once.
But I am wearing the shirt you stitched
two separate lifetimes ago. It is old

and falling to ash, yet every button blooms
the flowers of your design. I think of this
and I am happy, to have kissed
your mouth with the force of language,

to have spoken your name at all.

"Now" by Greg Watson from The Distance Between Two Hands. © March Street Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

An Elizabeth Bishop Poem: On Waking up Together, Love.

Amen!
-M

It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together
by Elizabeth Bishop

It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over the roof,
To feel the air suddenly clear
As if electricity had passed through it
From a black mesh of wires in the sky.
All over the roof the rain hisses,
And below, the light falling of kisses.

An electrical storm is coming or moving away;
It is the prickling air that wakes us up.
If lighting struck the house now, it would run
From the four blue china balls on top
Down the roof and down the rods all around us,
And we imagine dreamily
How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning
Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

And from the same simplified point of view
Of night and lying flat on one's back
All things might change equally easily,
Since always to warn us there must be these black
Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise
The world might change to something quite different,
As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking,
Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

"It Is Marvellous to Wake Up Together" by Elizabeth Bishop from Poems, Prose, and Letters. © The Library of America, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

"Night" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Repeating a Poem from May

I posted the following blog on May 6, inspired by Garrison Keillor's reading of it that week on NPR. Today's broadcast of The Writer's Almanac includes a reading of the poem again. The repetition of his broadcast of Longfellow's poem,  inspires my re-posting of the original meditation, and the following questions: 

 

I wonder how this repetition evokes the palimpsest of our hearts? What is written there? And written over? What do we uncover in hearing such poems again? 

Enjoy!

***

Poem: "Night" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Public Domain.

Night

Into the darkness and the hush of night
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the
light.
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
The unprofitable splendor and display,
The agitations, and the cares that prey
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
Molests us; all its records we erase
From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
With trivial incidents of time and place,
And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

Thank you Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac, for bringing this forward. I'm struck by sinking landscapes and fading phantoms, vanishing clamorous pursuits, splendor. Yes! I'm excited by this notion of the better life beginning, a cessation of things that molest our spirits our hearts. (How about that for a word, "molest"? Yikes!)
And this image of a palimpsest! That a sheath, a record could possess the mutual stories (truths?) of the past, with inscribed new tales, details over the top. Oh, the discovery of the original underneath is like this dawning of a new day. Sunrise! Light! Fresh eyes! Revived Spirits! Longfellow gives this poem the title of 'Night" - but the Hope rests in the imminent rising of what seems to have been hidden. Yes! The sun will appear. It just does. As will any written-over-record of truth. Behind clouds now, this light, this ideal radiance is: ready to emerge.

Are you ready?

Peace, Happy Contemplating!
Melissa

--
Posted By Queen Mab to QueenMab Contemplates... at 5/06/2008 10:48:00 AM

"Song" Today's Poem, by Edwin Denby

Song

by Edwin Denby

I don't know any more what it used to be
Before I saw you at table sitting across from me
All I can remember is I saw you look at me
And I couldn't breathe and I hurt so bad I couldn't see.

I couldn't see but just your looking eyes
And my ears was buzzing with a thumping noise
And I was scared the way everything went rushing around
Like I was all alone, like I was going to drown.

There wasn't nothing left except the light of your face,
There might have been no people, there might have been no place,
Like as if a dream were to be stronger than thought
And could walk into the sun and be stronger than aught.

Then someone says something and then you spoke
And I couldn't hardly answer up, but it sounded like a croak
So I just sat still and nobody knew
That since that happened all of everything is you.

"Song" by Edwin Denby from The Complete Poems. © Random House, New York, 1986. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

"First Marriage" by Liam Rector, Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

First Marriage
by Liam Rector

I made it cross country
In a little under three days.
The engine blew out

About a hundred miles north
Of San Francisco, where I'd
Hoped to start living again

With a woman I'd abandoned
Only a few months before.
The reasons I'd left her were

Wincingly obvious
Soon as I got back
To her, and it didn't take long

Before I again left her.
In a few weeks I'd meet
The woman who became

My first wife, the one
With whom I spent
Almost the entirety

Of my twenties. It took
About twenty years
Getting over her, after

We divorced at thirty.
Broke then, I took
A bus cross-country

And was back in the East
By Christmas, thinking it
Would take three years maybe

To put this one behind me.
But getting over her
Happened as we were

Both in our third marriages,
Both then with children,
Heading for our fifties.

She came cross-country
To tend to me when I had
Cancer, with a 20% chance

Of recovery. The recovery
From all she had been to me,
Me abiding with her as long

As I did, took place finally
When we, her sitting on my bed
And me lying in it, held hands

And watched ourselves watching
TV, something we'd never quite
Been able to do comfortably

All those years ago. So many
Things turn this way over time,
So much tenderness and memory,

Problems not to be solved
But lived, and I resolved
Right then to start living

Only in this kind of time.
Cancer gave this to me: being
Able to sit, comfortably, to get

Over her finally, and to
Get on with the fight to live while
Staying ready to die daily.

"First Marriage" by Liam Rector, from The Executive Director of The Fallen World. © The University of Chicago Press, 2006. (buy now.)

I notice...

Traveling across country. An engine blowing out. Things wincingly obvious. Cancer. Divorcing and remarrying. Taking years to "get over." Occurrences in the speaker's twenties. Cancer in their fifties. 20% chance of recovering.
The lines, "Problems not to be solved/But lived" and " Cancer gave this to me: being/Able to sit, comfortably, to get/
Over her finally, and to/Get on with the fight to live while/Staying ready to die daily."

I wonder...

How those cross-country trips inspired or informed partnership?

How many times do we need to travel across continents to learn about ourselves and our hearts?

When engines blow, who repairs them?

Where does cancer come from?

Can a car have cancer? How about a heart?

What happens if we can't fix things?

What does dying teach us?

Can we learn these lessons in any simpler way?

Happy contemplating! Happy road trips!

Melissa

Today's Poem: "Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale"

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

"Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale" by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads.© BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

19th Ammendment, Tiananmen Square, American Leadership: Juxtaposition in History, Invitation for Prayer

This information compiled by the staff at The Writer's Almanac strikes me in rich and glorious contrast to last night's event at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. The first black man in this country's to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.

It all informs my prayer and contemplation.

***

It was one this day in 1919 that the 19th Amendment to the constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed by the United States Congress. The movement for the women's vote had gained momentum under Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two women who had been born at a time in the 19th century when had been barred from college and all professions, including the clergy. They couldn't serve on juries or testify in court, sign contracts, keep or invest money, own or inherit property. Above all, they could not vote representatives into office who might have changed these laws.

The national women's movement came out of the movement to abolish slavery.

After the Congress passed the amendment on this day in 1919, it had to be ratified by a majority of state legislatures. The state that tipped the balance was Tennessee and the man who cast the deciding vote was the twenty-four year old representative Harry Burn, the youngest man in the state legislature that year. Before the vote, he happened to read his mail, and one of the letters he received was from his mother. It said, "I have been watching to see how you stood but have noticed nothing yet…Don't forget to be a good boy and…vote for suffrage." He did.

***

It was on this day in 1989 that the Chinese troops stormed Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crack down on students conducting pro-democracy demonstrations. The demonstrations had begun months earlier, after the government accused them of planning a coup d'etat. They drew thousands of supporters from three dozen universities and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins. The Chinese government declared martial law, and troops approached the square with tanks in the late evening of June 3.

Ordinary workers had gathered along the nearby roads. They had been demonstrating in support of the students for weeks, and they crowded into the streets to block the advance of the tanks toward the square. Though the event would come to be called the Tianamen Square massacre, almost all the people killed were the ordinary people in the streets outside the square. Violence broke out around midnight on this day in 1989, with some people throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the troops, and the troops responding with gunfire.

The violence continued in and around the square for the rest of the day. The famous photograph of a student staring down a tank was taken by an American Associated Press photographer named Jeff Widener. He went to the top of a hotel near the square and began to take pictures of the tanks clearing the last remnants of people from the streets. Then he saw one man walk up to a tank and stand in its path, refusing to move. He took several photographs and then the man was grabbed by bystanders and pulled out of the tank's path. Widener asked another journalist to hide the film in his underwear to smuggle it out of the country.

The identity of the protester in the photograph is not known with any certainty, but he's been called one of the most influential revolutionaries of the twentieth century.

A Reflection on "What We Want," What I want...

Thank you to the Writer's Almanac, and poet Linda Pastan for this poem.

What We Want

by Linda Pastan

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.

"What We Want," by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening. © W.W. Norton. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Response.

My favorite lines include:
what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises
our arms ache.
the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.

I think of children, with curly hair, smirking lips, brown skin, twinkling eyes, who giggle and writhe when I see them. They are from my dreams. My arms know their weight. My body holds space for their conception. They are there, just the other side of the room; sometimes coming toward me, tugging on my jacket. They are as real as stars, as varigated leaves on the sugar maple outside my house, as oxygen I breathe. Burning, unfolding, going in and out of constant presence. My dreams, wants, deepest desires, they are. Yes.

And you? What do you want? What do you see with your eyes open and closed?

Happy Contemplating!
Melissa

On Fireflies, Tarantellas, Love, Letting go...Meditation on Today's Writer's Almanac Poem

Poem: ""Fireflies" by Richard Newman from Borrowed Towns. © Word Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Fireflies

Tonight my yard is full of fireflies—
a glitterfest of green, blinking by hundreds,
exactly like last year, when she and I
drove out into the Missouri countryside
to talk about our marriage. It was thick
with greenery. The air was hot and thick,
and we had decided to try and stay together,
though by first light she'd changed her mind again,
and, to be honest, our eleventh hour
hope and promise lacked the weight of truth.
We wandered off the rocky dirt road
over weeds and brambles, through branches
and spiderwebs, and pressed into a clearing,
and it was like a pocket in the darkness
that surrounded us-the misty night
backlit with thousands of glittering fireflies
bettering the stars. It was a mating dance,
and we gazed into a sputtering green sea
of desire-such irresistible beckoning.
Ours was, too-a death-dance of mating,
a slower, indecisive tarantella,
and she asked me never to write about this,
but I knew then that I had nothing to lose,
that at that moment there was nothing I wanted
more than to write about the fireflies.


***
To be ablaze in light. To illuminate fully in the dark. To steady yourself and fly directly toward love. To be captured, die contained....

I think about all these things reflecting on Richard Newman's poem. I recall being 7 or 8 and outside at our rural house in Norfolk, Nebraska. It's dark, and I'm with my brother Ben, maybe a cousin Kristi or Jeff. We have jars. We are searching, seeking these blazing and buzzing insects: creatures of air, wings, fire. We want to make lanterns. We want this light all for ourselves. All to ourselves.

And how is this like our journeys in love?
How much are we the fireflies? How much are we seeking that magic, mystery of possessing illumination?
What do our dances look like in falling in and out of love?

I know the poem extends beyond this image of fireflies. I love how Newman casts this evening with other creatures and aspects of landscape. The web, the bramble, the tarantualla, that green sea of desire, the death-dance of mating. Whew! He's not playing around with words and emotion and who we are moving in and out of love.

I'm happiest thinking of the light, the wings, the night, and the notion of having "nothing to lose."

Yes.

Happy contemplating,
Melissa